Are there any photography experts/enthusiasts/hobbyists/someone-who-knows-what-the-f-they're-talking about on my friends list? :D

I'm not really sure where to start other than a trip to my local Henry's (Photography store). I'm looking for a wide-angle lens for my Canon Digital EOS Rebel XSI, something to take indoor photography (think home deco) as well as nifty landscape/cityscape shots. Anyone have any experience with a decent lens that can do both well? And I'm on a budget, cheap is good! I'm no pro!

If no one has any idea what I'm talking about, it's all good. I just thought I'd try here first because I don't have a lot of time to scour the net to find a good hobby photography forum where I can jump in and ask a bunch of stupid nub questions.

Hello to everyone who was left behind with me (which I see was just about everybody). :D I'm just hanging out with the dude this weekend. We took our bikes out for the first time this year and did our usual circuit. Today, my legs are pretty sore, and the dude is sunburnt, lol. But it was worth it, I think. :D

Point form!

- I'll be working on Chapter 42 this week. I'd like to have an update out soon, hopefully no later than next weekend. Some fun stuff has been ready to go down for ages now. ^_^

- I want to build a TS3 custom neighbourhood, starting from the ground up. I think building all the lots will take up the most time, but it will be fun. I'll work on this casually though, but it's something I definitely want to do. I also plan on sharing this if I can. :D

- There's a new sim_icon community out. I really have no clue if anyone out there would even want Simtopi icons for themselves (not fishing for anything, I just don't know who would want someone else's characters for their own icons if that makes sense... though I guess I do use some premades...). But I'm going to make a bunch anyway. If anyone has any specific requests, not just from my story, I'll see if I can do it. I actually like making icons. It's fun! :D

- speaking of communities simmply_anna has revived The Sims Writers Guild (Thank you, Anna!)! It's still a little slow right now, but if you like sim stories (legacies and other challenges too!), sharing your process, tips and tricks, all are welcome.

This was a surprise to me, and I almost missed it. Jasmine Baird came up in a Simspiration prompt. :D Why yes, I do still try to keep track of my characters A/U! I may actually attempt a drabble of sorts based on Jasmine *if* I can finish chapter 41 by this weekend. Though it's hard to say, I'm working late tonight and I've been recruited to babysit my nephew tomorrow. :p

I don't think Simtopi's ever come up in anything like this, hence this giddy squee-ing coming out of me right now. :D

I didn't do a lot with Chapter 41 this weekend, other than getting my teenagers ready for their scenes (thanks again everyone!). It's a lot more ambitious with the posing and staging than I expected. I admit, I'm a little daunted and spent my simming time doing other stuff.

I was getting one of my lots ready for download. I originally built it with custom content, but it wasn't a problem to refurnish a version without CC. Well, as they say on the internet, there's that "awkward moment" when you realize that the non-CC version doesn't look much more different than the "loaded" one. :p

Hope everyone had a good weekend! I know I had a pretty decent one, though it was busy as heck. When I wasn't working, me and the boy were actually out (on both Saturday and Sunday evenings! /scandalous) doing social stuff. And today I was doing more work, running around, and stressing out about it all. I think I'm giving myself tomorrow off. I totally love being self-employed. >.<

I still have a few days worth of friends list stuff to get caught up on, but I've been doing that kind of mindlessly for the past few hours. I really did want to thank whoever posted #37 in last week's secrets. I'm seriously flattered and I'm glad you like it.

leaths and simgaroop posted this, and it looked like fun. It didn't hurt that my "randoms" were completely awesome too. :D

Rules:1 - Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your album.3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.4 - Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.5 - Post it with this text in the "caption" and TAG the friends you want to join in

I'm not tagging, just go for it everyone! :D

Totally alt-grunge from my beloved 90's. :D

image creditquote: "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." by Douglas Adamswikipedia article: Compound Document

I was looking through some of my books this morning and found my original Sims disk in a small pile of CDs. Okay then, let's install it and give it a try. I remember being so addicted to this game. And yep, that's the framerate on the top left side of the pic. Nice, huh. :D Sims 2 runs at about 40fps on this computer.

I spent the better part of last night working on Chapter 37. I'm actually pleased to say that the whole thing has been outlined and I don't have to really struggle to get everything sorted out. It's also one of those chapters that have too much blah-blah-blah going on, but it's okay, I need to get through this to move on to the more exciting parts (well, exciting in my mind at least ;) ).

I was hoping to have it out by the end of this week, but me being in a 'mood' I haven't felt like working on certain scenes yet. I'll open up the game tonight and see what happens but I also may end up doing some prep work on the Wren and Raven story I've been talking about for like a year. I don't even know where I'm going with that, lol. Since that story starts after certain events in Simtopi passes, I've been putting it on hold and trying not to think about it so much, but I keep getting inspired to play and do something with it. :D

For those who've been keeping up, I have left a few teasers along the way. here, here and here. :)

For every single person who's left a comment for me and for others at allthingsimlish thank you sincerely! I'm so incredibly touched by all those comments and sentiments and be assured that I feel pretty awesome about all of you guys and this community.

Thank you. :)

As I said on twitter, I suddenly have work stuff to do. I actually have something to do every day this week, weekend, going on to the next, which is great for me, not so much for my hobbies, sims or otherwise (I NEED TO KNIT A SCARF, OKAY ITS GETTING FREAKING COLD OUT THERE!).

The next big update will be part 3 of the Mythos RR legacy, Gen 2. There will be kids. Possibly more babies. And pretty much the hottest alien gardener you've ever seen (at least around here :p ) That should be around this week!

Another nice night tonight. :). I had to spend the afternoon at my office and afterward me and the dude went out for Creme Brulee Lattes from Starbucks. He made dinner and we started in on Season 1 of True Blood which we have never seen before (so no spoilers!)

About halfway into the 2nd episode power went out. Its dark and the DVD is stuck in his PS3 so we can't even watch it on my laptop. I'm typing this on my BB btw.

Anyway while I'm here join the fun at allthingsimlish. If you didn't do it last year its like a slam book sort of except with lurve!

I've had a busy week and a small deadline for tomorrow so that's what I was up to tonight. But my brain is fried, so I can't really form cohesive thought right now. But I feel like blabbering anyway. This may be random, or not. Hello Friend List! :D

The guess-that-character meme thing is still going and about half of the 15 have been answered. Sorry I haven't been too prompt with answering, as I've said, I've been pretty busy today.

I've been trying to work on Chapter 35, but again, haven't been able to. But I want to try some stuff tonight. No updates this week from Simtopi or from Mythos

I have enough screens for another Mythos update, but I don't know when I'll be able to take the time organize them. I should have something soon, I don't want to keep the next gen waiting. But I'm looking at early next week. >.< (though if I'm not too fried after work tomorrow I may definitely work on it then)

lol I realized I may be the most boring Maxis shipper ever. I tend to love the standard pairings but that's how I am with a lot of stuff I enjoy.

I am going to get caught up with all the TS3 eps/sps and install it on my new laptop after I'm done chapter 35 and my round of the Mythos legacy. TS3 at this point, on top of work, would be way too distracting.

So I finally got myself a new laptop. Purely for business of course. >_> Incidentally it games quite well too. :D I had been prepping for a while, so it wasn't too difficult to have TS2 installed and my game copied over. Though I can't imagine my story style changing all that much, I can work at a higher resolution and everything loads up faster too!

I am playing around with aspect ratios for screenshots though. Chapter 35 will be in this format, just to see how it works out. Who knows, I may go back to the standard if I decide I hate it.

However, I do bring you a pic spam from my new computer's game. :D Of course, I promptly tested load times last night with my decked out game by sending a sim family of mine on vacation. I'm happy to say that loading between community lots did NOT take all night! *joy*

So here's my impromptu pic spam. Commentary is lame as usual, but I did include a small teaser for the Simtopi spin-off at the end. ;)

Thanks so much for throwing in your input in the social media poll a few days ago. I figured that LJ would be enough for most people but I also know some people are fanning out to other sites as well. To that effect, I set up a dreamwidth version of this site which will simply be mirrors of the chapters, and since I love twitter so much (I really do), I now have a sim specific twitter as well.

I like twitter mainly because I can read it and update it on my phone. Searching for my favourite hashtags and following the tweets has been pretty addicting for me lately, particularly since I'm on the go so much. So having a twitter site for my sims seemed kind of natural. I like the idea of posting quick thoughts and ideas on the go and not have to dedicate an entire LJ post for rambling.

Facebook and Tumblr also had the same amount of votes as Twitter so I'll look into those too. I'll keep the poll open, but this will honestly depend on feedback I get for it.

I said I'd bring a teaser to make up for the lateness of Chapter 32. Well, it's not quite a teaser, but it is a setting. We don't see much of it in the chapter at all, but of course, I did have to build the whole thing and make it a functional community lot.